Live To Write Another Day (14 page)

IF
the player captures Schmidt,
THEN
they will find a codebook on him. The “Interrogation Interface” now appears, allowing the player to engage in conversation with Schmidt.

By opening up a series of dialogue options, the player would then unlock various elements of the meta-plot of the story, allowing them to take further actions. This could involve cracking the code in the codebook, wiping out the remaining Germans in the town, acquiring valuable intelligence critical to the larger war effort, or perhaps even forming an unexpected bond with Sergeant Schmidt that could complicate things later with the player’s platoon mates.

On the other hand, if the player kills Sergeant Schmidt, a whole other set of options and potential story paths could be opened up. Maybe there’s a revenge plot that could play out involving one of Schmidt’s comrades. Or maybe Schmidt’s uniform becomes wearable so the player can now attempt a clandestine mission behind enemy lines that they would not have been able to engage in otherwise.

You get the idea? The possibilities are endless. This is what makes designing and writing interactive games both incredibly challenging and a lot of fun. If your brain is wired to think in terms of stories that can be told on multiple levels, like mine is, then you probably have the interactive gene as well as the writer gene—and a potential future telling these exciting new kinds of stories.

In recent years I have spent a great deal of time working for Walt Disney Imagineering, creating interactive experiences for Disney’s theme parks and cruise ships. One of the most interesting things about WDI is that it actually started as WED, Walter Elias Disney Enterprises and, as the story goes, was the passion project in the back of Walt’s shop, the shop in this case being Walt Disney Studios and the passion project, Disneyland.

Walt’s vision of building the “happiest place on earth” obviously turned out pretty well, but it’s the creative spirit of Imagineering that I think is his real legacy, his dedication to give artists of all different stripes, from illustrators to ride engineers to rock sculptors, the freedom to dream big and believe there’s no limit to what they’re capable of, which is why I have always felt right at home there.

The nice thing about working for any part of the Walt Disney Company is that you never have to look too far to find great storytelling. When you’re talking about theme parks, however, you’re talking about storytelling of a slightly different nature. This is
thematic
storytelling through the creative use of a wide variety of different disciplines: architecture, engineering, and advanced technologies, as well as set design, signage, sound, music, live performances, and all different kinds of interactions with walk-around characters and park operators, or as Disney prefers to call them, “cast members.”

Every ride experience also tells its own unique story—a story that has been thoughtfully conceived throughout the development process and informs every aspect of the finished product. My favorite example of this is Expedition Everest, a phenomenal rollercoaster at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando, Florida. The ride features a monstrous Himalayan peak that can be seen from almost anywhere in the park, and casts the legendary yeti of Asian folklore as the star of the show. Everything about the experience, from the museum-type artifacts and discarded mountain gear in the queue, to the railroad-themed ride cars, to the appearance of the abominable snow beast himself, is meticulously structured and designed to tell a satisfying story.

Ride queues in particular present interesting opportunities for storytelling. One of the many projects that I’ve done for WDI, Soarin’—Living Landscapes, an interactive experience located at Walt Disney World’s Epcot Center (also in Orlando), presented just such an opportunity.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of waiting in a long line to enjoy a ride at a theme park, I’m sure you would appreciate the work that we did with this one, because at the height of summer this particular wait could be as long as two hours. So the challenge here was to turn part of the queue, which sits in a 150-foot hallway, into an entertainment venue, thereby turning the time spent by the waiting crowd into something fun and memorable.

After a fairly extensive technology exploration, we decided the most effective approach would be to use “computer vision,” which is the same technology now used in the Microsoft Kinect video-game console. Using cameras to sense the body movements of our guests, we would then be able to create a series of short, three- to five-minute, graphical video-game-type experiences (projected onto movie-theater-sized screens) that they could engage in using only their bodies as an interface. The difference between our project and what Kinect would do some three years later is that we would use
five
cameras, each of which would capture up to
fifty
people, while the Kinect would use only one camera and would be able to look at only one person at a time. Our goal was to create a mass audience gaming system in which up to
two hundred fifty
people could participate at once!

As the creative director, writer, and producer of the project, I led a team of engineers, artists, and interactive designers through a series of brainstorming sessions. Over a number of months I would continually write and rewrite draft outlines detailing the proposed guest interaction of the five experiences that we would eventually produce and install at Epcot. Our most ambitious effort, called Balloon Odyssey, is perhaps the best example of how we were able to tell an interactive story using this very unique venue.

When the game begins, a hot air balloon sits atop a beautiful vista next to a shining castle, adorned with sparkling jewels. All is well in paradise. The kingdom is peaceful and serene. But then suddenly, ominous music rises, as a “bandit balloon” enters the frame, steals the jewels by sucking them up with a giant vacuum, and makes off with the loot (Act One). Following this, the “hero balloon” is launched, sailing after the bandit in hot pursuit. It’s now up to the fifty guests standing in front of each screen to steer their hero balloon through a series of obstacles (by controlling it with their collective body movements) in order to recover the stolen treasure (Act Two). Mythological creatures, craggy rock formations, and fierce weather threaten the hero balloon every step of the way, until the guests eventually bring it in for a safe landing back at the castle, after which each team receives a final score based on how many jewels they were able to recover (Act Three).

I’ll be the first to admit that Balloon Odyssey is a pretty unusual narrative driven in a most unusual way, but like all the games in the Living Landscapes installation, it’s a remarkably satisfying experience, one that I’m proud to say has run every single day, 365 days a year, since it was installed on July 4, 2007.

Before the proliferation of the Internet in the mid-1990s, entertainment properties pretty much stayed in their own neat little boxes. The only consistent crossover we saw were plays, novels, and other written materials turned into movies, and movies eventually migrating to television. But for well over a decade now, we’ve seen an explosion of two-way migration between all sorts of original properties, from comic books and graphic novels, to video games, to movies, to television, to the web. We’ve seen interactive marketing campaigns of all different types, using all different technologies, pitching all different kinds of products. And we’ve seen the emergence of casual online and mobile games that are not only available on both platforms, but are able to be viewed and played on each, within the course of the experience (for example, you can make a move in
Words With Friends
, either on your phone or on your computer through Facebook
,
and the game tracks your progress on both devices).

All this cross-pollination of creative content has also given birth to a new form of narrative called
transmedia storytelling
in which a fictional universe is created that allows for a story to be told across multiple mediums simultaneously.

What’s exciting about the transmedia movement is that stories are now being developed that are intended to be delivered across different mediums from the initial conception of the idea, not just as a way to take advantage of a secondary market. When you add to that the speed of technology advancement and the openness of younger generations to consume entertainment in new and different ways, it’s not hard to imagine a world in which these kinds of platforms could become extremely popular.

Recently a very forward-thinking company hired me to write an animated television pilot that would also lay the foundation for what I thought was a very smart transmedia strategy. The challenge was to write the pilot in the traditional way, using a four-act structure that allows the resulting twenty-two-minute episode to have multiple commercial breaks while having each act be somewhat self-contained so that it could potentially be viewed online as a five-minute webisode. In addition, each script had to contain at least one
set piece
that could serve as the framework for a casual online game. In other words, we had to create a story that could stand on its own, be broken into four stand-alone parts,
and
have at least one scene with a clearly exploitable gaming element. There would also be a social networking component built into the website, merchandising, sponsorship opportunities, and the potential to create a full-length feature film based on the property.

This strategy not only gave the producers the option of delivering the linear content either online or on television, it also carved out space for original stories to be delivered via interactive games, opening up the possibility of allowing the larger narrative to unfold and expand simultaneously across the mediums.

This new paradigm is one of the most exciting developments in entertainment to come along in many years, especially for writers with the interactive gene. Only time will tell how this kind of narrative will be received, and what formats will eventually take hold and break into the popular culture, but make no mistake, transmedia storytelling is coming soon to a cell phone, iPad, and computer near you!

Finally, I think it’s only appropriate to conclude our little adventure by sharing with you my own vision of a future storytelling medium that I think has very exciting potential. I like to call it:

Story as a Living Three-Dimensional Experience.

Using the advanced processing power we will begin to see in all the new devices in the next few years (computers, smartphones, tablets, and computerized televisions), I see us being able to create photorealistic worlds that can be navigated in much the same way you navigate a video game. But this isn’t a game I’m talking about. It’s a story you essentially
step
into
and experience voyeuristically.

Imagine a live HD video feed that allows you to move through space as if you
are
the camera. You have the ability to go anywhere within this world—walk down the street, go to the park, go into retail stores, enter private offices, apartments, bedrooms, basements…anywhere. As you do, you encounter various characters playing out various scenes. You then have the ability to follow these characters and watch their stories unfold. In fact, you have the ability to experience every character and every location the world provides. When you return to certain locations at a later time, you see new beats of the story that you hadn’t seen before. All these beats build on one another, forming an interconnected narrative that is revealed scene by scene based on what you have previously experienced—a narrative that starts to make more and more sense the more you explore and the more time you spend in the world.

Instead of being a passive linear experience that you sit back and watch, you actively seek the story out and watch it unfold all around you by essentially living
inside
it. It’s an active, non
-
linear experience in which you choose to receive the various facets of the story in the order you want.

Creating such an experience would be similar to writing a television show with a large ensemble cast, where many storylines exist in parallel and intersect at various points along the overall arc of the larger narrative. And like television, these stories can continue in perpetuity, for as long as you (the creator) want them to. The difference is, once you launch this new type of “show,” you would not be restricted to writing episodes in self-contained thirty- or sixty-minute units. Instead, you would simply begin to add more scenes to whichever storylines you wish, whenever you wish, creating a living three-dimensional experience that continues to expand and grow in different directions.

The technological framework on which this system would be built would also allow you to track the parts of your world where your audience is spending the most time, as well as enable you to communicate with them directly. In this way, you and your writing staff could concentrate and expand upon the storylines where you’re getting the most enthusiastic response.

This is the kind of revolutionary storytelling that interactive technology gives us. Now it’s up to us, as writers, to take advantage of this monumental opportu
nity and create the defining entertainment mediums of the future.

Fresh out of the wonderful academic cocoon of Bates College in 1986, Dean Orion began his career as a professional writer by crafting copy for a local ad agency in his native Long Island by day and hopping trains to The Lee Strasberg Creative Center in New York City, where his first play,
Weekend In My Mind
, was produced by night.

After moving to Los Angeles in 1988 to attend The American Film Institute, briefly working for CBS Productions, and successfully mounting another of his plays,
A Comedy Of Eros
at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, Dean soon discovered that the long and very eclectic winding road of his career was only just beginning.

With the sale of
Maelstrom
in 1995
,
an original graphical adventure game purchased by special effects company Digital Domain, Dean suddenly found himself telling stories in remarkably new ways. Since then he has written, designed, produced, and directed an extensive and wide array of interactive content for CD-ROM, DVD, online, and console games.

Dean’s interactive credits include such console titles as
Van Helsing
and
Mission Impossible: Operation Surma
; massively multiplayer online games,
Guild Wars
and
Aion;
Nintendo DS and Wii titles
iCarly
and
The Penguins Of Madagascar;
as well as
numerous casual online games for Hollywood marketing campaigns, including such notable tent poles as
The X-Files, Men In Black, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Mission To Mars,
and
Independence Day,
just to name a few.

Managing this split personality between writing traditional linear and non-linear interactive content has never been easy, but Dean has always found a way to do both, writing freelance episodes of such television shows as
The Invisible Man
for Syfy,
Thought Crimes
for USA Network, and
Jackie Chan Adventures
for WB Kids. Recently, Dean wrote the American pilot for the internationally acclaimed animated television series
Ben and Izzy
for Rubicon Studios, and penned
Newburgh
and
I Am An American Soldier,
two short films for The National Museum of The United States Army.

Dean’s unique background has also led him into the world of themed entertainment, where he has worked for many years as a writer, show producer, and creative director for Walt Disney Imagineering. Among the high-profile projects that he has helped create for WDI are
Virtual Jungle Cruise,
which opened at the DisneyQuest arcade in Orlando, Florida, in 1998;
Soarin’–Living Landscapes,
a large-scale interactive gaming system that opened at Epcot Center in 2007; and
The Magic Playfloor
, an interactive floor installed on Disney Cruise Line’s new Dream and Fantasy cruise ships, which launched in 2011 and 2012, respectively.

A member of the Writers Guild of America, Dean has sat on the guild’s New Media Caucus steering committee and has been a featured speaker at several guild-sponsored events, including panels for the 2006 Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California, and the Writers Guild Foundation in 2008.

To contact Dean and learn more about The Writer Gene online community for writers please visit
www.thewritergene.com
.